


Harbinger's Failure

by Harlan_Malkavian



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: AU, Angry Shepard (Mass Effect), F/F, F/M, Rewriting the Ending, Shepard is a willworker, blue deus ex fail, the Author is still in Blood Rage about ME3 endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 15:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20391898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harlan_Malkavian/pseuds/Harlan_Malkavian
Summary: What if the choices given to Shepard by the Blue child where a trap but she don't fall for it?





	Harbinger's Failure

**Author's Note:**

> While lacking inspiration for the next chapter of the Luvers story (Right time, Right place) I translated and adapted this short story I wrote some years ago, but meanwhile the Shepard I used changed and evolved. The second chapter yet to be written.
> 
> Again, English is not my first language and I have no beta.
> 
> italics are thought  
italics in quotes are a foreign language

Anderson... Anderson was dead, killed by the illusive Arsehole using Shepard as a puppet, pulling her string like in a rehearsal of a very old thrash metal song. And Jehanne Gabrielle Shepard was unconscious on the floor of a plain elevator platform that has just take her into the heart of the Citadel, the nest of the Catalyst, blood was flowing from her wound staining her tanned skin.

“Wake up” a childish voice rang out from everywhere in the giant room while a blue figure partially materializes in front of the prone Commander, like a ghost of millennia past or a hologram. 

“What... where is this?” She asked rising up slowly, with enormous difficulty, she was wounded in body and mind and weakened by blood lose.

“This is the Citadel. Where I live.”

“And who are you, exactly?” she asked again still mind Fogged by the last hit.

“I am the Catalyst” 

“I thought the Citadel was the Catalyst” she pressed on unconvinced.

“A simple mistake. The Citadel is part of me” 

“a part of you. I must stop the Reapers, can you help me?”

“No the Reapers are mine, I control them. I was created aeons ago to solve a problem.” The Catalyst whit the face of a human child, the same child that tormented her dreams for months, keep answering her questions like a useful VI.

“ You control the Citadel and the Reapers, why use Saren. And what problem is that?”

“To prevent Chaos, organics create it. To prevent organics from creating an AI so powerful that it would overtake them and destroy them”

The prothen sacrificed they last to stop the signal from the Citadel to reach the dark space. Ire and fury were slowly taking the place of tiredness and surprise, all the innumerable trillion of death caused by this thing, awful corrupted monstruosities stealing the face of others, then the bodies and minds and souls.

“But that's exactly what you're doing, you bring extinction!”

“Not exactly. The Reapers harvest fully developed civilizations, leaving the less developed ones intact. Just as we left your species when we were here last.”

“But you killed the rest...”

“We harvested them. We brought order to the chaos. We helped them ascend and become one of us, allowing new life to flourish, while preserving the old life forever in Reaper form.”

_-You assimilate your victims identities and turn them into monsters worse than the most awful Fomori, but not this time-_ it was so immensely hard to control herself, to dominate her furious side, she had to try and be diplomatic with this image of the enemy but time was running out, the fleet was falling and she was too tired to use her awakened senses.

"I think we'd rather keep our own form,” she said plainly, wishing to see some kind of reaction in the Catalyst.

“Impossible. Organics will always trend to a point of technological singularity. A moment in time where their creations outgrow them. Conflict is the only result, and extinction the consequence. My solution creates a cycle which never reaches that point. Organic life is preserved.”

“This is your inscrutable plan? To stop our creation from destroying us you destroy us with your creations? Flawless logic. You call yourself the Catalyst, an IA created to solve a problem, but what are you really?” The fake child was there at arms reach but she didn't dare to touch him.

“I'm the avatar of the collective mind of the Reapers”

“who created you?” She needed to know her enemy, to find a crack in his armour and a lie in his word, she already know the answer or at least a version of the truth, learned directly directly from The Last of of the creators in the last moment of a abominable existence, a rotting corpse keep alive by a failing technology.

“A species aware of the inevitability of conflict, they create me to control dealings between all the civilizations, but we could never avoid the conflicts. The strongest conflict wage between organics and synthetics so we create a new solution." he droned on mechanically.

“The Reapers?”

“Yes. The Creators shaped the Reapers, a synthetic representation of their existence, then the Reapers give me a purpose. I used the new creation to ascend the Creators into the first true Reaper, that was the only solution possible.”

“So you preserved your creators, but your reapers can't be the only way or the best one” Jehanne was about to crush bur her objective was so close, so so close, she gritted her teeth against the pain and the fear and the rage.

“Organics create synthetics for the betterment of their life, but that has a limit. For bettering of theme self the synthetics must be free to evolve and surclass the creators, this generates conflict, destruction, chaos! Is inevitable. Reapers take al the organic and synthetics lifeforms and preserve them before the conflict could wipe them out” But Shepard was at her limit, she could barely tolerate that cold arrogance.

“But they started the conflict!”

“You are in conflict with the Reapers but they are uninterested in war”

“They are?” her eyes become harder, the pupils feline-shaped, her body was preparing to attack, the familiar tingle of biotics running down the nervous system.

“A burning fire declare war? Generate conflict? Or it simply performs its function? We are the same, we reap your bodies, your knowledge your creations and preserve everything in a new Reaper. We bring balance and order like a purging fire. So new life can prosper”

" The fire does not declare war, but whoever sets it up does! And new life prospers until you decide that they have prospered enough".

Chaos, everything was about chaos and Shepard was listening was without trusting his words, she knows too well the effects of indoctrination, how it takes over the body, how it traps your mind and force you to a helpless watch. An enormous force of will had been needed from Benezia to take back a few moments of free will like Saren had a few moments to free himself with death.

“But you're taking away our future. Without future, we have no hope. Without hope... we might as well be a machine... programmed to do what we're told.” Shepard kept the interrogation and calm demeanour, with the hands behind her back in a relaxed pose that also allowed her to keep the fist strongly closed, and open and closed again. She couldn't yet let her emotions free.

“There is hope. Maybe more than you know. The fact that you are standing here, the first organic to do so in countless cycles proves this. And the dispositive you call Crucible is nothing more than an energy source, that using the Citadel and the Mass Releye can be diffused across the galaxy, rudimentary but effective. Is a real marvel that you could find it, we destroyed it long ago" -More lies- she was sure of it.

“So now what?”

“My solution is no longer valid. A new solution must be found. The Crucible has altered my function. I can't proceed. I can only guide you in its use. Its energy can be released as a destructive force. Organics will prevail at our expense. All synthetic life will succumb, as much of the technology your kind rely on. Including the relays, you depend upon.”

“But the Reapers will be dead?”

“Correct. But peace will not last, one day you will create new synthetics and all will be lost.”

_-that's made your defeat inevitable, aeons and you know nothing-_ but the human was sure, the target was close. 

"Peace is possible, Rannoch proves that. You all are trapped in your own conviction and you can't escape or don't want to. There must be other choices” it must, she will not sacrifice the Geth and EDI.

“Harness the Crucible's energy. Use it to take control of the ones you call the Reapers.”

__

“Control? You are telling me that the Illusive Man was right” her voice dripping with irony and disgust.

__

“Correct... though he could never have taken control, as we already controlled him.”

__

“And what would happen to me?” Outside the fleets were still fighting and falling, the Citadel was like the heart of an immensely destructive cyclone, with the strength to wipe out entire planets, Shepard started rubbing her temples, her head was beating like crazy and her legs were about to give up.

__

"Your body will dissolve and you will become the new catalyst, Your memories and thoughts will be preserved eternally and the Reapers will obey you"

__

"So I must renounce my humanity and my ideals, hurt Liara to protect the abominable existence of your Reapers. And I don't want that kind of absolute power, hubris is too tempting with it" she would probably lose her awakened Avatar, but what would she do with the Reapers wrapped around her metaphorical fingers _-I would destroy the followers of Set and free the ancestors of my tribe. But no, I can't use this, it would destroy me. For Gaia we will find another way, we are so close.-_

__

“There is one other solution. You may combine the synthetic and the organic.”

__

“Combine?”

__

“It is a very elegant solution. And a path you have already started down. The harvesting will cease. It will be a new ascension, for synthetic and organic life.”

__

“So, I just...”

__

“Add your energy, your essence, with that of Crucible. The resulting chain reaction will transform both of our kind. We synthetics will become more like you, and organic life will become like us.”

__

"And why you didn't use someone indoctrinated to do that on one of the previous cycle" 

__

"We trayed and failed, organics were not ready, that choice can't be imposed" Sheppard waited for the Catalyst to keep talking, for more than a minute the silence was deafening.

__

"But now, if I chose that it will not be an imposition for all life in the galaxy? A new DNA, perfect fusion. Not at all! That's an abomination to Gaia"

__

"You know the consequences"

__

"Know them? You brought me here to show false choices, to convince me that those are the only meaning of a weapon designed though hundred, thousand of millennia by innumerable species.” her fist was closed and her tiredness forgotten for a little while.

__

“But you lie! This is your last chance at indoctrination, showing me three fake option but pushing me toward the better for you, Harbinger."

__

"The Harbinger is one of my servants"

__

"You tried to keep me from the real meaning of the Crucible with negative effects that are not there because you are not perfect like you like to think. You are been created to serve the Weaver, to bring order and immutability but the Wyrm corrupter you, and your mission have been distorted. Like the web of the weaver trapped and plundered the Wyrm into madness, the Wyrm took your mind. The Catalyst resonate with the energy of the Wyld it will purge you, burning away the Entropy that now runs too deep for you to survive.” she laughed for the first time in Bastet knows how long then looked hologram dead in the eyes.

__

“I am Jehanne Gabrielle Shepard-Medici, I stopped Saren and the Sovereign, I destroyed the Collectors, convince all the races in the galaxy to renounce old centuries-old feuds, I participated in the annihilation of an entire solar system to STOP YOU!" the fury of the Spectre exploded and the giant room was illuminated by biotic flashes.

__

"SHEPARD! You must choose, time is running out and the reaping must proceed" 

__

_“Lady of the Burning Sands, Sekhmet, Mistress of Dread! May no enemy find me, May no harm approach me, Your sacred fire surrounds me, No evil can withstand Your Eye.”_ she prayed how it was done in the ancient empire in R n kmt, the mouth of the black earth.

"I'm a kinfolk of the Shadowcats, the Eyes of Gaia and a member of the Dreamspeakers Tradition" she took her Morrigan, a Phalanx MKV now dirty with dried blood of various colours, the fake child took a step back and his voice was overtaken by another more dark and low.

"The cycle must continue, Humanity will be preserved through Ascension" but Jehanne smiled, she knew what she had to do.

"You know nothing about true Ascension and I've made my choice, for my daughters. Fuck you and die!" she aimed at the hologram and fired, overheated her gun.

Darkness fell

*

Jeanne Shepard was floating in deep darkness and silence, she was alone_-don't look like a bar-_. Floating was the only thing she could do ant time was meaningless.

_-I don't feel like I'm passing through the Veil. Maybe this is something between death and life where people can fight to stay alive or chose death- But how could she make that choice? She didn't see a passage to the Duat and the weighing of the heart._

__

“I can't keep that promise” she could not bear that, she tried to move and look around but she could only think her body was unresponsive -Maybe I let the Reapers win, I kill Liara and this is my punishment-.

__

She recalled all she had done in the last year, tormenting herself with 'What if' and 'but' starting with the near-death of Jenkins, that she barely avoided only thanks to her knowledge of the Time sphere.

Sha'Ira, General Kahoru, helping the Rachni Queen, using magic to torture the project head of the bait at Azuke and so on. She tried so hard to stop musing on the past, things she can't change, memories that tormented her showing around like shadows. Hours or days passed by and she was bored and wishing for action, or to hold again her Liara.

"The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive." Told her Joker one time they were in one the Citadel club drinking, surrounded by nothingness Jehanne could see how right that was.

__

Century later? Her prison was filled by flash and colours and sounds. Then cats, a lot of kypur surrounded her meowing, one lighter in colour started hitting her cheek with a paw, like slapping, her Avatar. The mist dissipated.

__

"Shepard!" 

__

“ It doesn't look like a bar” she murmured groggily.

__

"Commander!" The familiar click of her omnitool helped her come to full awareness, she was again in the Citadel's corridor but this time it vas corpse-free, Anderson was calling on the omnitool.

__

“so we are still alive” he stated plainly

__

"Why should we be dead?"

__

“The Harbinger” her mind was still foggy, but she remembers more clearly now, the suicide charge toward the teleporting ray never happened it was part of the indoctrination, the battle had gone nothing as she had remembered in that vision or nightmare or whatever.

__

Before the final battle, some Glass Walker had struck a pact with the spirit of London, her genius loci, for help. Krogan had literally stomped the enemy line riding huge alien T-rexes and the rachni dug a tunnel to guide her to some rubble near the ray that she reached with a biotic charge, killing a Marauder.

__

“it doesn't matter, they tried to indoctrinate me but failed,” she tells the admiral while getting up with a graceful flip.

__

"We are under the Council's spire, in a sector reserved for the Keepers. Keep moving You should be in one of the passages to the inner control chamber.”

__

Shepard reached the main room and again TIM was there, meat and bones this times, hopefully, this was real life, not some fantasy or Indotrinaction trip.

__

"I had underestimated you Shepard but I've told you, Control is the only way" Anderson was at her side, wounded but lightly and the Medigel in the armour would be enough.

__

"You are indoctrinated," she told to the head of Cerberus with no emotion or regrets.

__

"Wrong! And with the Crucible we will take over the Reapers and control them for the advancement of humankind" Jehanne had just seen that scene, maybe she couldn't trust the vision from the Harbinger but she was tired of his madness and justification, his experiments and she hates him so much for all the lives lost for her Caitlin, turned into bait and food for Tresher Maws.

__

“ I don't have time for your bullshit!" was the only word from Jehanne while she gripped Menhit “She who massacre”, the name of a lion goddess of Nubian origins, her M-22 Eviscerator MkV and shot him in the face, again and again.

__

Anderson legs almost give out and he staggered against a sort of metal column and sliding to an half-sitting position on the ground motioning the Commander to keep going and use the damn Prothean console, she did stopping a few second to hiss like a cat at the late Cerberus head, generating a small flame tongue then braking the flaming corpse with a biotic singularity.

__

“Don't want another killer cyborg. He didn't deserve a chance to suicide like Saren, for Azuke and all monstrosity done by Cerberus, they are not much better then Pentex" she digited quickly into the console and the Citadel arms started to open welcoming the Crucible.

__

“should be grateful I didn't have time to make it painful” 

__

"I know they killed Caitlin, but don't lose yourself in vengeance" a shadow passed over Jehenna, but soon she will return to Liara.

__

“That not a risk, vengeance is done. From your expression, I get that you have been on the receiving end of that hiss”

__

“Yes, it was 30 years ago, how could I know that the girl I was hitting on was a Swara?” Jehenna just laughed planting hands on her knees just to not topple and roll around.

__

“And then she married you, a Glass Walker kinfolk, Chagina have goo eye” but the banter was interrupted by a cacophony of voices and rustling of leaves.

__

"Crucible ready, Indoctrination attempt detected” a red light passed on Shepard “scanning.. scanning... subject free from Reaper control" from the console appeared the form of a big tree of unknown species. 

__

"You are the Catalyst"

__

"correct" 

__

“The Crucible is completed, can it stop the Reapers?" she asked holding on the console for dear life, it was the last chance... hundred, thousand of Killi, kinfolk and willworker had given blood ant sweat and quintessence to complete this single piece of mystical-technology, she prayed Gaia, Luna and Sol for this last chance to work, to free them.

__

"The success probability of the Dynamic Resonance to purify and destroy the Reapers are over 99.9%, it will deactivate the relays for forty-eight are.“

__

"Good, but it will destroy only the Reapers?" she asked full of hope

__

"The release of energy has a chance of 60% of destroying technologies with Reaper influence" the hologram replied with its multiple voices, reproducing a plethora of genders and species, with some difficulties you could hear the click of a Rachni and the sub vocals of a Turian among many others.

__

"So it would likely kill EDI. But why the relays would be only deactivated for a short time and there are other modalities?" she was fearing the worst outcome, closing her fist at her sides.

__

"The relays are almost free of Wyrm corruption, and now the energy blast of Destruction mode have been tinkered and refined enough to not destroy the auto-repair systems. And there are another two: Prothean scientist, among other species, tried to create a way to Control the Reapers but it was an impossible task with Dynamic Resonance Energy. It would just drive them to the greatest deep of madness and destruction".

__

The radio trilled again with a call from Admiral Hackett "Shepard, the Crucible is still inactive"

__

"I'm on it, Admiral”

__

“be quicker than, the fleets are falling fast."

__

“Aye aye Admiral”

__

“Good, Hackett out.” then a pause, Shepard and Anderson looked out of the bit reinforced window into the heart of the raging fight, an Alliance's dreadnought was almost gutted in half by an enemy flaming ray.

__

“And the other?”

__

"Suppression, the crucible energy will be lowered many order of magnitude but will also be more focused, targetting only a specific part of the reaper technology. In many cycles organics have studies fallen Reapers to find a way to destroy them avoiding risking collateral damages while others only wanted to preserve the relays, many have fallen to indoctrination but some was spared thanks to the destruction of those systems during the fight had deactivated the Reaper. Suppression will free every mind trapped in their corrupted artificial bodies" Jehenna studied the tree hologram.

__

"Are you telling me that they will get the emotion of every person they have melted and absorbed? And that will drive to suicide like the Cybermen?"

__

"no data on Cyberman"

__

"leave it, it was rhetorical and we have no time fo a Doctor Who explanation" she looked at Anderson with a faint smile

__

"cyberman?" he almost laughed but ended coughing heavily

__

"Admiral?"

__

“It's nothing, again Cyberman”

__

“My great-grandmother Jennifer is a Whovian, we watched so many old episodes together. I mean David Tenant old!” she looked out again the Normandy was charging the Harbinger.

__

"Bloody hell! Activate Suppression, now!".

__

An explosion of green energy surged from the Crubyble followed by a massive ray directed to the relay e from the to every other relay in the galaxy, the Milky Way was flooded by an emerald tsunami.

__

Every Reaper hitten by that Dynamic force shredded and stopped, they artificial mind overrun by thoughts and emotions, terabyte on terabyte of memories that they had suppressed for millennia and couldn't handle.

__

The fleets used that precious seconds to reorganize the all hell broke loose on the Reapers, In all the galaxy thousand uppon thousand of huge synthetic ships literally jumped into the nearest star, overwhelmed by the sheer horror of their existence, seeking peace beyond the Veil.

__

Other stared shoot to randomly, hitting everything in their path, foes or not, just a little minority could keep fighting with some coordination and tactics, with so small numbers they got easily annihilated, the Harbinger himself exploded when the two Tanix cannons of the Normandy shattered its main artificial eye and run trough all his length.

__

On all worlds every creature mutated and controlled was instantly incinerated, turning into a sickly cloud mid-step or mid-swing, in a sea of dust and green light people were stunned still and silent.

__

Even Troile and her lover, locked in eternal Torpor under the ruin of Chartaghe, feel a distant echo of the Wyld Wave cursing through the universe. Every Cainite that has yet to reach Golconda or the Final Death felt pain trough they stilled hearts and all the Black Spiral Dancer or Hellcat, Fomori or Drone were forced to run through the Gauntlet and seek sanctuary in the Umbra or die, but the explosion passed too quickly.

__

For a few second absolute silence ruled, except for the wind blowing, then a great rumble and people, alive and undead, started screaming and singing and dancing and crying and kissing the nearest person of right gender (for them). A rainbow of colours and shapes and all the languages in the galaxy where heard just like the Great Tree in the Citadel Heart.

__


End file.
